North River is a 3.4 mile long tributary feeding into Deerfield River near Shelburne Falls Massachusetts. I fell in love with this place within the first five minutes. This river is small and typically freestone in nature, but holds good sized wild brook trout in its deeper pools. Above its entrance into the Deerfield there’s a mixture of pocket water, rapids, riffles and deep pools holding rainbows, brookies and a few browns, some in the 10- to 12-inch range. All in all a wonderful place to bring a 4wt fly rod and catch trout all day.

First off, the east branch of the Westfield River should be the entrance to heaven. This river is fucking amazing. With glacialy formed boulders separating each crystal clear pool its practically begging to be fished. All obscenities aside this river has to be one of my new favorites. I saw several other fly fisherman on my hike down the catch and release area. Many of them were there for the first time eager to catch some native brown trout. Some had been there all morning with little to no success. I took that as a sign to go for a hike. Get some real distance between them and me. That was a good call. I tied on a gold beaded olive wooly bugger (my favorite spring fly) and hooked a 14 inch brown. Then another. This place was loaded with good size trout. Beautiful fish that were acrobatic and feeding on everything. Apparently its not uncommon to have a 20+ trout day at this river. Although lots of fisherman know about this gem its not a big deal. There are miles and miles of river that anyone can get lost in and not bump into another soul. I hiked back upstream an noticed several guides teaching beginners how to fly fish. The EB is a great river for beginners. Its not to big and casting is manageable with little obstruction behind you. What a place. Getting any work done is going to be difficult with this river on my mind.